Title: Tyler Buckspan

Author: Jere’ M. Fishback

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: April 10

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: No Romance

Length: 47100

Genre: Literary Fiction, YA, Lit/General Fiction, Historical, Family-drama, Coming of age, non-explicit, gay, bi, cisgender, homophobia, in the closet, psychic/medium, sports

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Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Jere’ M. Fishback here today. The author has brought Tyler Buckspan to tell our readers a little bit about himself. Welcome, Tyler.

Meet Tyler Buckspan

I’m Tyler Buckspan, the title character in Jere’ M. Fishback’s book. I live with my grandmother and mom in the small Florida town of Cassadaga, not far from Daytona Beach. At the beginning of the book I am fifteen years old and I lack self-confidence. Wouldn’t you be if you were skinny and shy?

I’ve known I was gay since I was thirteen, but at fifteen I still have no sexual experience. When my half-brother Devin moves in with us, I become infatuated with him because he’s so handsome and masculine. I know that may sound weird, developing a crush on my half-brother, but it’s true. I can’t get him out of my mind.

Devin’s a great basketball player. He’s an accomplished auto mechanic too. And in the months following his arrival in Cassadaga he teaches me a lot about those things. It helps with my self-confidence at home and at school.

Oh, about my psychic abilities….

I guess I inherited them from my grandmother, who gives palm readings, conducts seances, and tells fortunes. I really have no interest in spirituality, but especially in bed at night I’ll have visions. Sometimes I can read people’s thoughts, which is kind of spooky.

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Tyler Buckspan lives with his mom and grandmother in 1960s Cassadaga, a Florida community where spiritual “mediums” ply their trade. The mediums—Tyler’s grandmother among them—read palms and tarot cards, conduct séances and speak with the dead.

Tyler’s a loner, a bookish boy with few interests, until his half-brother Devin, nineteen and a convicted arsonist, comes to live in Tyler’s home. For years, Tyler has ignored his attraction to other boys. But with Devin in the house, Tyler can’t deny his urges any longer. He falls hopelessly in love with his miscreant half-brother, and with the sport of basketball, once Devin teaches Tyler the finer points of the game.

In a time when love between men was forbidden, even criminalized, can Tyler find the love he needs from another boy? And is Devin a person to be trusted? Is he truly clairvoyant, or simply a con artist playing Tyler and others for fools? What does Devin really know about a local murder? And can Tyler trust his own psychic twinges?

Excerpt

Tyler Buckspan
Jere’ M. Fishback © 2017
All Rights Reserved

Spring water beaded on Eric Rupp’s shoulders. The drops looked like gemstones, reflecting sunlight. I stood behind Eric, waist-deep in the spring, my arms wrapped about his chest, my hips pressed to his buttocks. We had just made love on a bedsheet; it lay crumpled on the shore. June’s heat had made our sex a sweaty, sticky affair, but now the spring cooled our flesh.

I listened to water drip, to Eric’s soft breathing. My chin rested against the back of his neck, and I buried the tip of my nose in his damp hair.

Since my first visit to Eric’s home, we had made love any number of places: his house, my grandma’s, the spring, and even the backseat of the Chevrolet one afternoon when a thunderstorm raged. I’d never felt so close to someone; I had touched every part of Eric’s body.

His dad owned a tent and sleeping bags. On weekends, we’d often camp by the spring’s edge. We had constructed a fire pit, girding its walls with chunks of lime rock, and thereafter we always burned pine limbs during our evenings there, listening to sap crackle and hiss, watching sparks rise into the night sky.

“Will it always be like this?” Eric asked me one evening.

We lay side by side on our backs in his tent. The mildewed smell of the canvas made my nose crinkle. Beyond the tent flaps, a campfire smoldered. My gaze was fixed on the canvas overhead.

“I hope so,” I said.

Shifting his weight, Eric asked me, “Are you and I queers?”

I cleared my throat. “I suppose,” I said.

Eric turned toward me; he crooked an elbow and propped his head against his hand. “Does it scare you, being…different?”

“A little. We’ll have to be careful, always.”

After draping his arm across my belly, Eric laid his cheek against my sternum. “I think I’m in love with you, Tyler. Is that okay?”

My windpipe flexed, and then my eyes watered.

Holy crap.

“Of course it is,” I whispered.

Purchase

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Meet the Author

Jere’ M. Fishback is a former journalist and trial lawyer who now writes fiction full time. He lives with his partner Greg on a barrier island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. When he’s not writing, Jere’ enjoys reading, playing his guitar, jogging, swimming laps, fishing, and watching sunsets from his deck overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway.